“We got to go now! Ole Paul is waitin’ for us! Stay with us, footses; we is on ouah way!”
And what a way it was! Oh, what a splendid, soaring, flashing, winglike way! They came like streaks of ebon lightning; they came like ravens with a swallow-swoop; they came like shot out of a gun, and like a thunderbolt; they came like demons—but they came!
He heard them coming from afar, he heard them racing down the street, he heard the furious thrum of all their flashing wheels, and then they flashed before him, they were there! They shot past, eight abreast, bent over, pedaling like black demons; they shot past on their flashing wheels, the fibrous market baskets rattling lightly; and as they flashed before him, they cried “Paul!”
Then, wheeling solemnly in squadrons, they rode slowly, gravely back, and wheeled and faced him, steady and moveless on their wheels, and said, “Hi, Paul!…How’s ole Paul today!”
Then the parade began. They did amazing things, performed astounding evolutions on their wheels; they flashed by in fours, and then by twos; they did squads-right, retreated or advanced in echelon, swooped past in single file like soaring birds, rode like demons soaring in the wind.
Then madness seized them, and desire for individual excellence, a lust for championship, wild inventiveness, whimsical caprice. They shouted with rich nigger laughter, howled derisory comments at their fellows, strove to outdo one another—to win applause and approbation—all for Paul! They swooped down the street with lightlike swiftness and a bullet speed; they swooped down in terrific spirals, snaking from one side to the other, missing curbs by hair-line fractions of an inch; they shot past, stooping like a cowboy from the saddle, and snatching up their ragged caps as they shot past. They shouted out to one another things like these:
“Outa my way, ole Liver Lips! I got somethin’ dat I got to show to Paul!”
“Hey, Paul—look at ole Slewfoot ride dat wheel!”
“Move ovah deh, M’lasses! Let ole Paul look at someone who can ride!”
“Get outa my way, Big Niggah, ’fo’ I rides all ovah you! I’m goin’ to show Paul somethin’ dat he nevah saw befo’!—How’s dis one, Paul?”
And so they soared and swooped and flashed, their rich black voices calling back to him, their warm good voices bubbling with black laughter, crying, “Paul!”
And then they were off like furies riding for town and the reopening of the markets, and their rich, warm voices howled back to him with affectionate farewell:
“Good-bye, Paul!”
“So long, Paul.”
“We’ll be seein’ you, Paul!”
“My name,” he shouted after them, “is George Josiah Webber!”
Flashed and rose the splendid name as proud and shining as the day.
And answered faintly, warm with pleasant mockery, upon the wind:
“Yo’ name is Paul! Paul! Paul!”
And coming faintly, sadly, haunting as a dream:
“—is Paul! Paul! Paul!”
CHAPTER 3
Two Worlds Discrete
When Aunt Maw spoke, at times the air would be filled with unseen voices, and the boy knew that he was listening to the voices of hundreds of people he had never seen, and knew instantly what those people were like and what their lives had been. Only a word, a phrase, an intonation of that fathomless Joyner voice falling quietly at night with an immense and tranquil loneliness before a dying fire, and the unknown dead were moving all around him, and it seemed to him that now he was about to track the stranger in him down to his last dark dwelling in his blood, explore him to his final secrecy, and make all the thousand strange, unknown lives in him awake and come to life again.